Liars and Saints

One more gay male writer to discuss before I really kiss NYC's Pride Parade goodbye. That writer is Billy Eichner. I don't know much about this person. I haven't seen "Difficult People"--though I admire the title--and I haven't even seen "Billy on the Street." It *is* refreshing to know that Eichner once created a transgender character who was an asshole, just to poke fun at the apparent pop-culture commandment that all transgender characters get finessed as if they were saints. Ballsy and smart! But what I want to talk about is Billy Eichner's song, "Glitter and Ribs." It's a Taylor Swift song, allegedly (it's really Eichner's), and Eichner never pretends he's making fun of anyone other than Taylor Swift. Remember: To be gay is to celebrate something while also mocking it. Though "Glitter and Ribs" seems a bit vicious, I'd argue that you can only savage a certain writer's style if you really, deepl...

(5) One of my favorite moments in the Taylor Swift canon is this observation about Jake Gyllenhaal : "Photo album on the counter. Your cheeks are turning red. You used to be a little kid with glasses in a twin-size bed." Do you see what she does here? She's like a camera. She records some empirical data: the photo album, the red cheeks. Then the camera zooms inward, and we watch TS making a deduction: "That kid in the glasses is Jake Gyllenhaal, and Current Jake is blushing because his past is getting exhumed." Also, the red cheeks: A good writer finds tension in every corner! So much in so little space. That's called economy. (4) Jason Mraz is slightly smarter than your average pop writer, and this was especially clear with "I Won't Give Up," a few years ago . What I like about this (admittedly treacly, melodramatic) song is the weird angle it uses. This is not about new love or a big breakup; it's about some pedestrian problems within...

The Pride Parade is a distant memory, now, but before the week closes, I want to look at one other major gay achievement from the recent past: "Sex and the City." Perhaps you've heard of it? Perhaps I've mentioned it here before? "Sex and the City" came, first, from the pen of a woman, Candace Bushnell. Then it was sort of co-opted by a gay man, Darren Star. Eventually, another gay man--Michael Patrick King--took over. It's King who interests me. King oversaw the emotionally-rich episodes of the late seasons, and King wrote the triumphant first movie. (Did I call that movie triumphant? Yes, I did. Having Miranda meet repentant Steve at the midpoint of a bridge, as India Arie's "Heart of the Matter" played loudly in the background? Brilliant. Having Joanna Gleason, the spiky, cerebral Sondheim muse, in the role of Miranda's therapist? A gift to gays--everywhere. Michael Patrick King also authored the disastrous second movie--but we won...

It’s the week of the romantic comedy. We’ve touched on Ephron, SATC, Bock and Harnick. We’ve talked about Lubitsch and about Rodgers and Hammerstein. Now it’s time to look at a Platonic ideal: the Sky/Sarah story in “Guys and Dolls.” A romantic comedy has to start with the two would-be lovers hating each other (or appearing to hate each other). Think of “The Taming of the Shrew.” At the start of “Dolls,” Sarah and Sky are at odds. We’ve had the tone-setting opener, “Fugue for Tinhorns,” which has established we’re in fast-moving, plain-talking, peppy Manhattan: I got the horse right here. The name is Paul Revere. And here’s a guy that says if the weather’s clear. Can do, can do. This guy says the horse can do. If he says the horse can do? Can do. Can do. Everyone loves Frank Loesser’s writing, and it’s because he makes characters so effortlessly. The deliberate un-grammatical flavor of “I got the horse right here,” “Here’s a guy that says if the weather’s clear,” “This guy sa...

"The Barber and His Wife" and "Poor Thing" are "paired" numbers. Together, they tell one story. They explain the "wrong" that Sweeney will need to "right" (or avenge, or half-avenge); they give Sweeney more of his "I Want" moment. Sondheim plays with shifting perspectives. Sweeney emphasizes the "beauty" and "virtue" of Lucy; in Lovett's telling, which has the same melody, it's *Sweeney* (Benjamin Barker) who is beautiful. He's also a "proper artist with a knife." (Lovett admires craft and skill.) By contrast, Lucy is simply a "silly little nit." (Lovett's choice of title--"Poor Thing"--is subtly condescending. But, also: This is a world where people most certainly are treated like "things.") -One thing Sweeney and Lovett can agree on: Benjamin Barker was foolish. He didn't notice the "pious vulture of the law." (That wedding of "p...

I'd thought the title "Go Set a Watchman" was a cynical publisher's ploy. I thought some dick in a suit in Manhattan wanted to create an "echo" of "To Kill a Mockingbird," so he found another four-word title with the word "a" in Position Three, and he tacked that on to some old draft of Harper Lee's. (TO KILL *A* MOCKINGBIRD. GO SET *A* WATCHMAN.) That's not true at all. Lee invented the title "Go Set a Watchman." And she wrote the book before "Mockingbird," and the two books do not tell one story. "Watchman" concerns an adult, or adult-ish, Harper Lee; "Mockingbird" is about Harper in childhood. You might think: If "Mockingbird" had been the childhood saga, why hadn't Lee written it first, long before "Watchman"? But I can think of at least one other case where a writer chose to tackle the recent past before tackling the distant past. That's Augusten Burroughs,...

In honor of NYC's Pride Parade, a few thoughts on Howard Ashman. Mr. Ashman helped America to come out. He did this by infiltrating Disney. His wry, bitchy voice made it into many American homes, including mine, and I knew about him before I knew about Sondheim or about RuPaul. A recent play suggested that "to be gay is to mock something while celebrating it at the same time." (So, for example, gay men often poke fun at Mariah Carey while still venerating her. Or: There's a guy who dresses in a tutu in NYC and calls himself "Carrie Dragshaw," in honor of "Sex and the City." That's part eye-rolling, part respect. And it's all-gay.) Ashman found a way to laugh at middle America while also giving middle America what it wanted. In "Beauty and the Beast," there's enough earnestness to help us get swept up in Belle's story. But there's also a Peggy Lee "is that all there is?" quality to the storytelling. Ashman...

The finale for "Sex and the City" is controversial. That's because Darren Starr, among others, felt that the writer, Michael Patrick King, was betraying the show's principles. SATC was about the challenges and perks of being single and having great friends. Why betray that tradition with a standard romantic comedy? Fair enough. Like Emily Nussbaum, we can dream of something bolder, more experimental--something closer to the startling finale of "The Sopranos." But I can't help but wonder: Does the SATC finale get enough credit? This is the work of a particularly shrewd gay male student of Nora Ephron, Ernst Lubitsch, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. It's a writer who has romantic-comedy knowledge deep within his bones. It's a triumph of craftsmanship. Does it really make sense within the context of the series, and given our knowledge of Mr. Big's sociopathic past? No. It does not. But it's still a small, sparkling jewel. Examine it with me...

To me, the most entertaining thing about planning a wedding is choosing the readings. I don't really like poetry. I had to study it in college, and I still don't really like it. But prose selections are clunky; they go on and on and on. One early solution was a children's story by Arnold Lobel. I've liked Lobel for thirty-ish years, because he was a cranky, repressed gay man who found love late in life, and who channeled that love into "Frog and Toad." These stories are romantic and unsentimental, and they have two vivid characters: neurotic, bumbling Toad, and patient, generous Frog. The stories are like the saga of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, transplanted to a world of talking amphibians. The only major challenge in using one for your wedding is: doing some editing. But if you cut the first ten pages of any given Lobel story, replace them with a bald announcement of the problem ("Toad is upset because he never gets any mail"), then let ...

"Sweeney Todd" resembles "Guys and Dolls" in one crucial way: Both works have plots closely tied to their sub-plots. (Jack Viertel makes this observation in "The Secret Life of the American Musical.") It's not gospel that the sub-plot *needs* to have an impact on the main plot. In "Oklahoma!" the Laurie/Curly story could sail along easily without the comic relief provided by the Annie/Will sub-plot. And, in "Carousel," we can follow Julie and Billy down their dark road without ever giving a thought to Enoch and Carrie, if that's what we would like. The same is true in "Cabaret": You don't need to know what happens to the two elderly lovers to be invested in the main-stage story, the saga of Sally and Cliff. But things work in an odd way, in "Guys and Dolls." There's a main story: The love of Nathan and Adelaide. There's a sub-plot: The love of Sky and Sarah. Nathan needs a stack of money to ru...

(5) “Vinegar Girl,” by Anne Tyler. It seems to me that Tyler doesn’t get enough respect. (Half the world feels this way.) One tone-deaf review called this recent Tyler novel insensitive to Eastern European immigrants, and it’s not. It’s smart, brisk, funny, and sad. Tyler has written over twenty novels, and her next one is out in early July. I recommend “Vinegar Girl” while you wait, especially for the classroom scenes: A rebellious pre-K teaching assistant mocks the school lunch, gets entangled in a “did not-did so” discussion, and has the gall to answer, bluntly, a child’s question about “who is the best artist in the class?” As a former childish leader of children, I was delighted, and I “could relate.” (4) “The Staircase.” Recently, my husband and I woke up in the middle of the night talking about this show. If Janet Malcolm could make a movie, it would be this. The actual trial seems so far removed from the question of what happened on the night of the murder, it’s like you’re w...

It’s a big season for Ernst Lubitsch. In one week, Joseph McBride will release “How Did Lubitsch Do It?” The book has already received substantial attention from the NYT. The title comes from a question Billy Wilder would often ask, as he made his own movies: “How would Lubitsch do it?” (Wilder himself made “Double Indemnity” and “Sunset Boulevard,” so he wasn’t some forgettable shmoe.) I’m not a Lubitsch expert. I regret that Netflix does not offer even one Lubitsch film for streaming. (Netflix is weirdly deficient in the black-and-white-movie department; an exception is “To Kill a Mockingbird.”) I do have fond memories of “Ninotchka” at Film Forum: Greta Garbo is a crazed Soviet bureaucrat, Garbo meets a free-wheeling Parisian man, there’s some confusion around a Western-style joke (“A man at a diner orders coffee without cream, and five minutes later the water returns and says, Sorry, sir, we don’t have cream. Can it be without milk? ”) Eventually, the Parisian gets Garbo to lau...

If you aren’t a Sondheim nerd, stop here. If you are a Sondheim nerd, here’s “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAWWiYy_frY And here are some things to notice: -An opening song needs to set a tone and introduce some of themes we will pursue in the course of the evening. Sondheim learned this the hard way, when “Forum” almost tanked. (Sondheim saved his show by adding in “Comedy Tonight.”) Famous openers include “O What a Beautiful Mornin’,” which puts an emphasis on “the land.” (And note that “Oklahoma” returns to the land at the end of the evening: “We know we belong to the land, and the land we belong to is grand.”) Another well-known opener is “In the Heights,” from the show of the same name, which introduces us to several characters and makes clear that we are going to spend two hours contemplating the notion of “striving.” “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” gives us our central character, underlines his weirdness, and shows that our night will be about t...

Here I am, another white man writing about Cardi B. Said, Lil bitch, you can’t fuck with me if you wanted to. These expensive, these is red bottoms, these is bloody shoes. Hit the store, I can get ‘em both, I don’t wanna choose. My husband gets really excited when he hears this song, and he starts stringing together obscenities. It’s an aural and visual feast. It makes sense to me that “Bodak Yellow” would oust Taylor Swift from the top of the charts, because it is many things that Taylor Swift is not: blunt, un-calculated, vulgar. You think of “nature, red in tooth and claw.” The soles of the speaker’s Louboutins evoke thoughts of “blood”; the soles also lead to more soles; unsatisfied with just one pair of “bloody shoes,” Cardi B runs out and buys an additional pair, this time “YSL.” (“I can get ‘em both, I don’t wanna choose.”) I don’t dance now, I make money moves. Say I don’t gotta dance, I make money move. If I see you and I don’t speak, that means I don’t fuck with...

I travel via murder mystery. The best way to see Boston is when you're holding a Dennis Lehane book. If I'm in the Southwest, my thoughts turn to Becky Masterman. Recently, in California, I had a great companion in the form of "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," by Michelle McNamara. (Jeffrey Toobin's "American Heiress"--a murder mystery in its own way--is also very fine California reading.) A year ago, my husband and I went to Edinburgh. The writers' museum there spent a great deal of space on Robert Burns and on Sir Walter Scott, but--good grief!--who cares about them? My husband purchased "The Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," but I can't say I have much interest in Robert Louis Stevenson. What grabbed me was the temporary exhibit: "Thirty Years of Inspector Rebus." For thirty years, Ian Rankin has plotted the Rebus adventures, and he has done a fair amount of his work in Edinburgh itself, in a slightly seedy spot, "th...

It's Fathers Day--we're all thinking about parents--so: A few thoughts about one famous SATC episode, "My Motherboard, My Self." This was a first--a first!--SATC writing assignment for two extremely young writers. Did you know that? The storyboard for season four had a few loose strands. At some point, Miranda's mother was to die. At a different point, there was to be a storyline about choosing a proper bra, and a story about what happens when your computer crashes. (The writers for SATC would list their problems in a van ride everyday, to Silvercup Studios, and then those problems would become the basis for new episodes.) In a planning session, the show-runner had a stroke of genius. (What else could you call this?) He would link the death of Miranda's mother to the quest for a correct bra: Two different stories about a search for support. And the rest is history. There's a great deal to love in "My Motherboard, My Self," and the Number One ...

Spoilers included herewith. (3) AMERICAN FIRE (Monica Hesse). This is a close-to-perfect book, which makes certain choices in the gushing NYT review surprising. The reviewer opens with her complaints--and they aren't even unassailable complaints--and you may stop right there. Don't. Do go out and pick up this book. The Eastern Shore of Virginia isn't attached to Virginia; you have to cross water to get to it. Many people do not realize it exists. Once, a Virginia marching band represented the state on a football field; a wealthy donor became irate because no musicians had been drafted to recreate the tiny strip that is the Eastern Shore. Here, on the tiny Shore, a prosperous life is just a memory. Now, many people are required to work for Big Chicken; they do unappealing, monotonous tasks for chicken factories, and they are paid very little. Because of the decline in wealth, many buildings stand empty. In this setting, a dim-witted man, Charlie, met a spark-plug, Tony...

Math Thoughts, Uncollected: -There was a change in vocabulary, maybe sometime in the late nineties. When you and I studied math in first and second grade, there was a procedure called "borrowing." I would "borrow" from the tens column to make sure I had enough ones to complete my subtraction problem. But there was an issue, here: I wasn't really borrowing. I was never going to return the ten. Now, the same procedure is called "regrouping." You're taking a ten and "grouping" it anew, as ten ones. There are actual toys--called, pretentiously, "manipulatives"--to illustrate this operation. (Teachers sometimes have an addiction to pretentious language. A teacher is an "educator." A test is an "assessment." A book is "a text." This is to be avoided--but I'd argue that the switch from "borrowing" to "regrouping" really is a good one.) -One very simple question I loved, from a m...

(3) "At Last," the final filmed Patrick Melrose installment, doesn't work. It gives us a hammy kiss between Patrick and Mary; I'm sure this repelled Edward St. Aubyn. Without the brilliance of St. Aubyn's prose, the story, such as it is, falls apart. That said, I very much enjoyed the final flashback to young Patrick, when he tells his dad to stop raping him. This isn't in the book, and yet it's an effective tip of the hat to Patrick's stunning courage and resilience--a constant, through all the stories--and a nice way of suggesting that Patrick can ("at last") feel new compassion for himself, instead of fury, at the ripe old age of forty or forty-five. At the very least, this series gets credit for bringing readers back to the original books. Rereading a few, these past several weeks, I really loved when Patrick reflects on what it means to "do nothing." (You can't do nothing, because the very notion of "doing" is g...